As the growth of the Internet has continued and accelerated, more and more uses are being found for the Internet. One of the more recent uses is for Internet telephony, which may be defined as two-way voice communication between two or more persons using the digital packet network provided by the Internet. A significant potential exists for widespread use of Internet telephony. This is particularly true if reliable, high-quality service can be provided. A way to facilitate the provision of special enhancements for telephony would be to charge differential pricing, with a higher price for Internet telephone connections having such enhancements. Alternatively, enhanced features such as voice enhancements or increased packet density, or, in other words, the packets per unit time used for the call, could be made available for selection at the beginning of an Internet telephone connection and billed at a special rate. Differential pricing for Internet telephony offers the potential of a significant savings over conventional telephone connections, especially international telephone connections, while furnishing the provider with a revenue stream sufficient to allow the development of new and enhanced services.
One obstacle to differential pricing for enhanced services related to Internet telephony is that present Internet billing methods lack flexible provisions for allocating costs. At present, each user who connects to the Internet through a commercial provider typically pays for his or her own connect time, without regard to the specific activities being undertaken during the connection, and without regard to who initiated the connection. In an Internet telephone connection, both parties pay for their own connection time. This is in contrast to the cost allocation typical in conventional telephony, wherein the calling party pays for the call except where different arrangements are specifically made, for example, such as collect or 800-number calling where the called party pays for the charges connected with the call. Among other issues, users of Internet telephony are not likely to be willing to pay increased per-minute charges for enhanced services unless they can be assured that they will not be required to pay for unwanted calls. Users of standard telephone services may not willingly adopt Internet telephony unless the billing arrangement is one they are accustomed to and they are able to get the quality of service that they desire.
Furthermore, the typical Internet telephony billing arrangement does not include techniques for taking advantage of the user interfaces available with Internet telephony end devices to provide sophisticated services unique to Internet telephony and not typically available with traditional telephony service products.
Therefore, there exists a need to address such problems and for a billing server for Internet telephony which will provide flexible billing options and enhanced billing services and information.